


Life in Color

by Blame Canada (OneHitWondersAnonymous)



Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Comma Abuse, Established Relationship, Fluff, I know, M/M, Present Tense, Short One Shot, Weird right, too much prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 04:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12357531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneHitWondersAnonymous/pseuds/Blame%20Canada
Summary: Once Craig realized the rainbow came from a person—one steadily beating heart, two wide green eyes—the world was never quite the same again. Maybe he's gotten a bit too poetic with time, maybe a bit too over-dramatic and strange- but he's worth it. God, is Tweek ever worth it.Rated T for language. Creek. High School AU. One-Shot.





	Life in Color

**Author's Note:**

> Was chatting headcanons with some cool people in the SP Discord and got inspired to write this! Hope you enjoy it too!

It’s a Tuesday morning.

Craig hates Tuesdays. They’re too early in the week, and they always feel too long. The rest of the week looks like a mountain from Tuesday morning. The cold is particularly biting this Tuesday, and he rubs at his subtly leaking nose, sniffing loud enough to hear it through his headphones. Summer barely existed this year, and he’s not looking forward to the snow. Nobody ever really is. Oh well.

The bus rolls to a stop in front of him, and with the snap of its shitty little stop sign popping out to blink red in his eyes, the doors crumple in like the gates to a particularly teenaged hell, and his sister shoves in front of him to get to her friends first. He just wants to get to school. He sighs and climbs in after her.

His road is bumpier than the main ones and he’s not sure if it’s because he doesn’t live in the best neighborhood or if it’s because none of the roads get enough attention from city hall. Plow trucks are unkind to asphalt. A particularly deep and familiar pothole makes his palm jam into his chin. He’s bitten his tongue like that before, so he’s learned better; he doesn’t talk on the bus. There’s not much point, anyway.

Everything looks so grey this morning. He hates mornings. Tuesday mornings, though, they’re the worst, and he’ll say it all day long.

The snow adds another layer to the dull monochromatic landscape, covering the last bits of mostly dead brown grass with greyish sludge. It’s still white in the middles, though, and that part’s alright. Besides that, even the sky matches. For a moment, Craig wonders if he’s suddenly gone completely colorblind. Then he catches a glimpse of a horrendously hot pink and red monstrosity of a scarf wrapped around Heidi Turner’s neck, and he is horribly reminded. He glares at it, as though it can hear his disdain for its existence, and scrolls through his playlists for something new to listen to. Nothing is really working for him though, so eventually he gives up and keeps his headphones in for the only reason that it completes the tired Tuesday morning look he’s going for. He’s also lazy, and the bus is loud. Everything feels slow.

They file off the bus in a neat line, their backpacks smacking into the corners of the benches because they’re filled with too many papers and the rows are too small. Craig notices his shoe is untied and takes care to take higher steps to prevent tripping on it. He’s sure if anyone caught him they’d laugh, but it’s the aisle of a bus, and he can’t be assed to care, really. He yawns and follows the crowd to the front doors.

Even though Heidi so rudely reminded him of the existence of color, everything seems so muted, and it isn’t a good thing. His eyes are sweeping the crowd, picking out bits and pieces of crucial information to analyze later. There’s a lot going on and he doesn’t want to forget any of it.

He finds himself at his locker without remembering how he got there, but that’s fine. He’s here for only two reasons, and the first is easy. He drops his backpack to the floor and shrugs off his winter jacket, tearing open the locker and carefully hanging his coat by the tag to avoid warping the fabric. No one actually keeps their backpacks in their lockers, so he closes it loudly after that and presses one hip against it to stare out into the crowd.

He can feel him before he can see him, like a tiny sun with a flow of energy that radiates from him in the form of soft, comfortable heat. He steps within his radius and a switch in Craig’s brain is flipped, and one by one the colors start to flood back into his vision. He can now clearly see just how ugly that shade of green is and question why anyone would ever want to wear that somewhat regularly in the winter. That red clashes with her hair dye. He doesn’t know where to begin with him.

His right side is leaning into cool metal while his left side is hearing the very beginning of a symphony orchestra tickle his ear, and he’s not wearing headphones anymore. Craig doesn’t have to look to know. He can feel the growth of flowering vines blooming from a familiar heart, green and shocking yellow, from here. The vines start to dance in his peripherals, like a frame to the picture that’s playing out in front of him. A body brushes up against his left side, instantly warming it, and Craig’s insides begin to melt from the heat.

“Did you see Eric’s new hat?” the voice he adores mutters, bitter as the coffee he’s sure to have in at least one hand. “Atrocious,” he sneers, and Craig hums his agreement.

“I wouldn’t expect any better. Did you see-”

“God, yes, you’re talking about Heidi’s scarf, right? Those colors don’t go together in _any_ universe.” He shivers, probably half in disgust and half involuntary, his side pressing even closer to Craig’s, and he’s not complaining. His chest is feeling so hot, his heart turned to soup, and the affection he has for this body that hasn’t even looked at him yet is all-consuming.

“They’re ‘complicated’ again,” Craig mentions.

The sun scoffs. “No they’re not. They’re barely together in the first place. I give them a week before that status changes to either ‘in a relationship’ or ‘single.’”

Craig smirks, chuckling via a heavy breath through the nose that he knows is recognizable as a laugh, but maybe only to him. “I’m betting on ‘single.’”

“They’re so co-dependent it’s ridiculous. You’re going to lose, y-you know,” the sun, _his_ sun, insists, and he laughs a bit more for real this time. He doesn’t have to look to know he’s smiling now too, because he can feel it in his bones when their hands clasp together. The essence of his spirit drips into his veins like a poison, but the good kind, and one he would happily die to. As it rushes up his arm and straight into his heart, it warms every inch of him to the core. He lets out another sigh, but this one isn’t bad. The energy has simply given him more air than he needs in his lungs, and with his heart stopped, he doesn’t need it expanding his chest anymore.

They stand side by side for a moment, watching the sea of people wade around them like an obstacle course. Craig knows they’re catching the same faux pas, even when they aren’t verbalizing them. He has on the scarf Craig has called his favorite before, and it’s true, it is a favorite. It’s just the right shade of heather grey to complement his pea coat. He’s adorable in a pea coat.

The first warning bell sounds overhead, telling Craig that he needs to let go of the hand he hasn’t looked at yet and go to class, and the thought nearly breaks his heart. His partner grunts at it. Craig squeezes their fingers together once more, for good luck. “I hate Tuesdays,” he adds, as is customary, and as he’s sure he’s heard a million times before from his own lips.

“I know, right?” he responds, and the moment Craig feels him turn his head he copies him so that they’re catching each other’s eyes. “There’s so much left of the week; I can’t stand it.”

His name is shouted at him from within his head, over and over, _‘Tweek Tweek Tweek,’_ and each repetition feels like a new hymn. Craig is grateful for the ability to see color only when he looks into the hazel-green of his boyfriend’s eyes, takes in the rich brown of the freckles that dust his nose and pock everywhere else, and the rosy tint of his cheeks from his own trek outside no less than ten minutes prior. Tweek is artistic perfection, with his long nose and wide round eyes and high cheekbones. Tweek is everything Craig could ever look for in a model for his photography, and so his portfolio reads less like a college application and more like an extended love letter. At worst, he will have proof of how much he adores him, though it’s hardly a worst. At best, he’ll be accepted to every university he applies to next month.

“You got your phone?” Craig asks, because Tweek forgets it some days, the quietest his phone ever gets. Tweek nods though, and he’s a little relieved. School passes faster when he has sloppy texts to read under his desk. The teachers know they’re texting but don’t care much to stop them anymore. Detention never matters anyway, because they just both end up in it for the same crime, and they spend an entire fifty minutes doing nothing but stare at each other.

It’s why Craig feels so confident he’s memorized the curve of his brow, the hook of his nose, the shell of his ears and how they stick out slightly. He knows exactly where all six of Tweek’s cowlicks are located on his scalp. He can trace them like a children’s activity book the same way he can trace the moles on his back on Sunday mornings, slow and lazy with a gentle index finger he hopes can transfer love without words. He knows it can but it’s never, ever enough.

Craig blinks when he hears the second bell ring, and he realizes he is still standing in the hallway with their fingers intertwined, the floors nearly empty save for the occasional speedwalking student who cares about attendance. They’re always late to their first classes; this ritual is crucial to Craig’s day, and he swears he can’t survive a Tuesday without it.

Tweek squeezes his hand gently and tugs on it, pulling at Craig’s marionette strings that he has always had wrapped around his fingertips. It is a silent command that Craig obeys, and he leans down to kiss his forehead, but snags a peck to the tip of his nose too. Tweek’s smile is the sun again, blinding him, and then their hands are disconnected, and it’s so unbearably cold. “See you at lunch,” Tweek says, and Craig nods, flexing his empty fingers to shake away their fidgeting at the lack of contact they so desperately desire. Tweek gets on the tips of his toes to kiss him and it blesses him, and Craig can feel vines blooming from his own lips, transferred in the contact. They snake through his body and plant flowers in his stomach, fill his brain with sweet nectar and his lungs with fresh water. He’s drowning, but it’s nice, so he accepts his fate.

Tweek takes his first steps away and Craig feels like his heart may as well be breaking, he’s so obsessed. God, is he obsessed, but he doesn’t care. “I love you,” he says, and Tweek turns, and his brilliance is so unsurpassed he wants to sob.

“I love you too,” he replies, and he walks away to his first period English class. As he walks, the change is gradual, and Craig’s heart is sinking and his stomach fills with lead. The green of the posters on the wall and the bright orange of the senior lockers fade slowly, slowly, until everything is muted again and nothing is beautiful. It’s because Tweek takes the beauty with him, Craig’s sure, and he’s never given it back. God help him if he ever loses him, because he’s not sure he’d survive without color. It is the life around him, and it grows from Tweek through his wandering vines and yellow rays of sunshine and green irises. It is everything.

Craig picks up his backpack, slings it over one shoulder, and only begins walking away when his sun turns the corner and the last of the sunrise blinks away from him. He trudges to history, his red converse dulled to maroon, and he sighs, because it’s Tuesday, and he hates Tuesdays.

Lunch never comes soon enough, but at least the pulses of rainbows that radiate from his pocket with each text can carry him through.


End file.
